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The man whose brain worked faster than Chacha Chaudhary

Mumbai-based comic fan-turned-filmmaker Alok Sharma met cartoonist Pran in 2009, the year Chacha Chaudhary turned 40. The meeting, an interview for his documentary Chitrakatha which traces the history of Indian comics, was also the culmination of a childhood dream. The two met at Pran's Naraina residence-cum-studio in Delhi and spent hours talking comics. Excerpts from the interview...

Updated: Aug 10, 2014, 06:22 IST

Mumbai-based comic fan-turned-filmmakerAlok Sharma met cartoonist Pran in 2009, the year ChachaChaudhary turned 40. The meeting, an interview for his documentary Chitrakatha which traces the history of Indian comics, was also the culmination of a childhood dream. The two met at Pran'sNaraina residence-cum-studio in Delhi and spent hours talking comics. Excerpts from the interview ...You were born in Kasur, now in Pakistan. How was life there?

My father was a police officer in Kasur and my mother a housewife. I was still a child when Partition happened. We had to leave everything and flee, but it wasn't easy to reach India safely. With the help of the Indian Army we reached Firozpur. All of a sudden we were homeless. It's a painful memory , we saw so much bloodshed that when I became a comic book artist I decided to stay away from violence and blood. I just cannot stand violence.

Who inspired you to become an artist?

My family wanted me to graduate and get a real job.

Art wasn't considered a profession back then. But my eldest brother Kanwarnath was an artist who graduated from the Jaipur School of Art, and he was a great influence. I learned art from him.

During my college days, I was published in Dainik Milap. Soon I sent some of my cartoons to Shankar's Weekly and a couple of them were published. Getting published in Shankar's Weekly was a big thing. Once I saw my name in a newspaper, it became an addic t tion, so I moved to Delhi, because all the big publications were here.

I started sending my cartoons to all the magazines. Initially I was just drawing pocket cartoons and most of these were political, so I decided to make cartoons that were unique. I pitched one such idea to Dharamveer Bharati, the editor of Dharmyug.

The idea was to make cartoons using lines from poems by famous poets of our time like Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar', Sumitranandan Pant, and Nirala. He got excited by the idea and named the series Kavita Cartoon. It became very popular.

From pocket cartoons to comics, how did that transition happened?

I met the editor of Navbharat Times and asked him why they relied on western comic strips like Phan tom and Mandrake. He said it was because no syndication agency offered Indian strips. There was no Indian syndication service back then, so I decided to start my own, Pran Features Syndicate, and started drawing comic strips under my own banner.

It was very difficult in those days. I would write and draw my comics and then make copies. There were no photostat machines back then, so even that was a tedious and expensive process. I then posted them to publications and waited for a response. First one publication and then others took notice and slowly my comic strips were getting published in all the major dailies, magazines and in several languages.

I always felt my drawings should look beautiful be cause that's what attracts a cause that's what attracts a reader so I made my drawings simpler, lines clearer and wrote stories that resonated with a common Indian.

How did Chacha Chaudhary happen?

I had seen western comics and their superheroes, the muscular, good-looking Phantom, Superman, and Batman, but I wanted to change that perception, so I thought, 'What if I break the stereotype of a comic book hero'. I thought of an old man, short, not very good looking and a little frail too, but I based him on Chanakya and gave him the power of wit. This is how Chacha Chaudhary was conceived.

He started off as a village simpleton, with a turban and dhoti-kurta, I also gave him a 'latth' (a laathi) but over time I had to make him modern, wearing a vest, a tie, sports shoes and carrying a walking stick.

But two of his most prominent features still remain 100% desi, his moustache and his turban. Not only the look but his stories changed over time. In his initial days he was fighting petty criminals, pickpockets, conmen, and thieves but in the 70s when the nation was facing a huge problem of dacoits I introduced a dacoit character, Gobar Singh. Later plane hijackings, terrorism, cricket matches found their way in. You need to keep up with the times.

Your characters like Chacha Chaudhary and Sabu are bigtime foodies...

That's because I am a foodie. I am a Punjabi, and Punjabis are known for their love for good food. I love animals, so almost all my characters got that from me as well. Chacha Chaudhary has a pet dog Rocket, but Rocket isn't some Alsatian or a Rottweiler, he is your normal stray dog, who came and stayed with Chacha forever. Pinky has a pet squirrel Kutkut.

I also included games like stapu, chor-police, aankh micholi so kids would get curious and learn more about these games. Insects like Beer-Bahuti are now getting extinct, when I read about that I wrote a story about Beer—Bahuti in one Pinky Comic and many people told me their kids wanted to know about the insect. So, you can do a lot with comics and your characters need to keep that innocence and that charm intact, May be that's why comic book characters never grow old. Except Billoo, I made him grow from a five-year-old naughty kid to a teenager with a girlfriend to add fun to his life.

People say comics have been hit hard by the advent of cable TV and internet?

I don't think so. One shouldn't be afraid of new technology but embrace it. I was the first one to try computer coloring in India in my comic Chacha Chaudhary aur Chor Ki Talaash. I think these new mediums can be used to expand the reach of comics like they did in US and Japan. I always felt Chacha Chaudhary can easily be adapted in any medium. We recorded radio Shows featuring him and later a TV show which despite its low—budget production worked really well. Think about it —600 episodes of Chacha Chaudhary, itni to comics nahin banaayi maine...

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